Character Sketch...My Uncle

He sits and sits by the hour, hunched over the linoleum table. His pallid lips quiver as if he's mumbling prayers or blessings. Really, he simply hovers in a blue smoke haze. It's as though a state of delicate balance and equilibrium is ever poised just above him, if he can maintain his intent and attentions. These waver and he flags...head dipping slowly and fitfully into a heavy nod. The table bears testament to the years he's been thus entranced in a perpetual state of afternoon Am radio beatitude. There is a mounting pyramid of stamped out filter less lucky strikes crowding the heavy ruby colored ashtray...brown stains and unidentifiable sediment litter the floor around his chair. His jaw is rendered slack and grotesque. I guess he has misplaced his dentures again. He grins time-to-time clown like, but his eyes are darting and sheepish, so very afraid. This is my uncle long dead. This is the dream i have of him,ever the same as when i was small. I am alarmed at the visceral nature of these dreams...returning again and again to a place i knew only as a small child...nearly a baby.
When I was small,I carefully skirted the table. A strange feeling of sadness, sympathy ,pity and mild disdain welled in me even then. Measured steps to the kitchen to the cadence of "I will not feel this, I will not feel this" carried me away as quickly as possible.
The house was enclosed always.There was never a window open. The rooms were cavelike...everything rendered in filtered light and deep shadow.Somehow my gram's house smelled of a doctor's office or old wax.